The Icelandic Prevention Model

,,In the context of increasing substance use among the youth in Iceland, a group of Icelandic social scientists at the Icelandic Centre for Social Research and Analysis (ICSRA), a non-profit research institute in the City of Reykjavik and now affiliated with Reykjavik University, along with policy makers and practitioners in the field, began collaborating in 1990s in an effort to better understand the societal factors influencing substance use among adolescents and potential approaches to prevention. We developed an evidence-based approach to adolescent substance use prevention that involved a broad range of relevant stake holders who worked together on this community-based, socially embedded and highly participatory effort.

In developing our approach, we relied on global research findings, as well as our own local observations about those individual and societal factors that contribute to the likelihood of adolescent substance use in Iceland. Based on the literature, and informed by our own work, a community-based, bottom-up approach was designed to deter adolescent substance use. The emphasis of our approach was on getting all relevant stake holders to the table to build a network of support, monitoring and opportunities for positive youth development at the local community level. We aimed to demonstrate that it is possible to develop theory-driven intervention to promote and facilitate social capital on the neighbourhood level, in order to decrease the likelihood of adolescent substance use by strengthening the supportive role of parents and schools and the network of opportunities around them. The prevention model that emerged reflexively and continuously links national-level data collection with local-level reflection and action to increase social capital. The model builds upon traditional planning models (iterative cycles of evidence, reflection, action) but with characteristics inspired by Icelandic spirit and temperament.

In the first step, a coalition of social scientists and policy makers use of national data to identify the scope of the problem and the broad outlines of the approach to be pursued. In Step 2, action shifts to the local level as team members ‘hit the road’, discussing the national data in communities and neighbourhoods throughout the country. By design, these local level discussions are inclusive, mobilizing an everwidening group of researchers, policy makers, practitioners and community members, including parents, school personnel, sports facilitators, recreational and extracurricular youth workers. Step 3 is local action in multiple sites, informed by the national data but animated by the uniquely different spirit, talents, and imaginations of neighbourhoods, towns and regions. Step 4 is integrative reflection; as local activities are reviewed by participants, process and outcome dimensions of the aggregate activity are explored, and then analyzed with the new round of national data.

Several characteristics of Icelandic culture distinguish the model from other planning approaches. Because of its size and scope, everything happens quickly in Iceland; indeed, one full cycle of the iterative model can be completed in just one year. The model is based on quick and confident action, fuelled by the Icelandic values of independence, cooperation and roles for everyone. Moreover, vertical and horizontal integration of information, ideas, activities and analysis is natural and relatively easy. The result is a model of intervention that has been grounded in efforts to address adolescent substance abuse but could be applied to a wide range of emergent health issues.“